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On June 6, 1944, known as D-Day, Atmore residents gathered around town, in churches and prayed for the Allied forces as they took the beaches at Normandy, France.

Not far from the action in Italy, the Freemanville resident Jethro Dailey’s U.S. Army unit was loading amphibious equipment onto ships.

“We didn’t land over there, but it was out from it,” Dailey recalled from that day. “They had that material go into the water until it got to land.”

Dailey, 95, said what he remembers the most is seeing all of the planes overhead.

“They didn’t tell us where we’re going until that Sunday morning,” he said. “All of those planes were flying over and all of those paratroopers were jumping.”

Last Thurs., June 6, the 75^th anniversary of the D-Day landing in Normandy was remembered.

Dailey was inducted into the Army on Jan. 4, came home for seven days, and then went back to Camp Stewart, Ga. He then went to training in El Paso, Texas, as a surgical technician. From there, Dailey was shipped to Virginia, and then went to Casablanca, Africa. He then went to France sometime later.

Dailey said he was in a boat off the coast of France during the operation.

“We sat there for a while, and I guess some of the Germans surrendered, and we brought a few of them back to the camp where we were,” he said. “We just loaded them down in the ship, and we talked to them. They said they knew it was going to happen, but didn’t know when.”

According to reports, on that day, soldiers advanced through the surf from ships against German gunfire onto Utah Beach.

Dailey, a surgical technician then, said there’s one thing he’ll never forget about that day — the smell.

“Before we got there on a camp, they were hauling them soldiers back to the camp where I was at,” he said. “They were hauling regular dead (American) people. I’ll never forget that.”

Dailey said he didn’t participate in any combat as blacks weren’t in combat.

“We were mostly doing materials and doing work,” he said. “I was in the segregated Army. They didn’t have too many black people on the front line.”

Dailey received several wards and decorations, including the World War II Victory Medal, the American Service Medal, the Good Conduct Medal AR 600-68, European African Middle Eastern Service Medal with one Bronze Star.

Dailey said he recalls the day that the war ended.

“I guess we had a big celebration,” he said. “After that, then they started bringing soldiers in. We operated the camp, and we fed them. I was in what they called Camp Lucky Strike. We had to feed them when we brought them back. A lot of them were in pretty bad condition.”

Dailey then came back to Atmore after the war was over, graduated from Escambia County Training School and worked for Monsanto for 32 years, and nine months, he said.

He married Lizzie Mae in 1947, and from the union, 11 children were born.